Low Tech Canoeing IX - What happened to the Old Town?

The history of the Watervliet Old Town:

 

The Watervliet Old Town canoe is an 18 foot Otca Model built in Old Town, Maine, in 1921. (That's the year before I was born). My family bought it from a family who had a home on Paw Paw Lake in Berrien County, Michigan. The owner was an executive in the local paper mill and his daughter was a couple grades ahead of me in high school. It was acquired in the mid 40s while I was a student at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado (where they brew Coors beer).

 

After serving in World War II (Army Engineers in the Pacific, Okinawa and Korea) I returned to Mines on the GI Bill and graduated as a Geological Engineer in 1948. During that last school year I started planning my big canoe trip and talked two of my fraternity brothers (Beta Theta Pi) into postponing going out into the cold, cruel world of career and work to go along. My younger brother, a Navy veteran and a student at Michigan State, was to be the fourth member of our expedition.

 

I have told you the story of our 1948 canoe trip in Western Ontario in earlier Emails in this series.

 

This was a once-in-a-lifetime trip for one who fell in love shortly afterward and had to spend the next decades making a living and raising a family. Ned and Ken, my two fraternity brother companions, went on to careers in Mining Engineering all over the world and never canoed again so far as I know.

 

The next spring after the Canadian trip the Paw Paw River was in flood, so hot-shot canoeist that I considered myself to be, I decided to run it solo in the Otca. I put in at Paw Paw Lake, and sitting on the rear with the bow in the air I am off down the Paw Paw River towards the paper mill where there is a backwater behind a couple low-head dams. I passed up  the so-called Upper Dam and when I got to the Lower Dam there was enough water flowing over it that I thought I could shoot it which I did without even slowing down. I managed to avoid the back curl but in trying to make a sharp left turn just below the dam the canoe overturned ejecting me (still no PFD) and headed downstream, upside down and alone.

 

Well I got tangled up underwater in some submerged tree branches. I thought to myself "This is a stupid way to die, drowning less than a river mile from the house where you grew up!" (The thought took a lot less time than the telling). Obviously I extricated myself or you wouldn't be reading this. I caught up with the canoe, pulled it out on the bank and emptied it, got in and finished the trip. I landed in the flooded woods behind the house and got my brother to help me carry the canoe up to the barn and hang it up. I don't remember what I did for a paddle but I always had a spare lashed into the canoe so maybe that's what I used.

 

 This is the first time I have ever told the whole story. There's no one left to give me hell any more. My grandfather's oldest brother drowned in the Paw Paw River on the 4th of July, 1869, at age eighteen..

 

We used the canoe on short trips on Michigan rivers. Each trip had a good story, like the duck hunting trip down the Paw Paw when I fired at a duck at a 90 degree angle to the long axis of the canoe causing it to tilt and dump my brother and his pet 16 gage shotgun into the river. Then there was the a trip down the Manistee where we froze our butts

in inadequate GI blanket sleeping bags and ended up standing around a fire all night.

 

Then there was the not-so-funny story of my two brothers coming home from a goose hunting trip trip without adequately tieing down the Otca on their car top. It flew off and followed their Chevrolet upside down down Michigan Highway 140 at about 50 miles per hour. Repairs were made that made the canoe useable again but really ugly.

 

NEXT: Restoration of the Old Town.

Low Tech Canoeing VIII - Wind and Smoke

Continuing about my 1948 canoe trip from "Wooden Canoe":

 

" Grandpa complained that the one thing they could count on throughout the trip was that the wind would always be in their faces, no matter from which direction they were paddling. The same phenomenon held true for smoke from campfires---always in the eyes."

 

We only got really lost once. It was after a day in civilization. When we reached the northernmost point of our journey we had arrived at the little wide-place-in-the road on TransCanada Highway 17 known as Wabigoon. We spent a short time in a Hudson's Bay Post replenishing our provisions and a long time in an Official Ontario Purveyor of Beer. We returned late to our last campsite which we had named "Slimy Island" because that's what it was. Next morning we are off on the return which, after some upstream paddling and a couple of portages, will find us in the Turtle River, a tributary of Rainy Lake. In a big marshy bay we find what we think is the right river flowing in and confidently head upstream. It is extremely serpentine thus masking what direction we were really heading. The hangovers from the previous day's imbibing didn't help. Late in the day we came to a bridge where no bridge should be. We have inadvertently arrived back at the TransCanada Highway an unknown number of miles east of where we spent the day before. Determined not to waste an entire day we decide to skip camping and spend the night going back downstream to where we started the day. So with the bow man snoozing and the stern man steering we drifted all the way back to our point of departure. Daylight enables us to find the right stream and we are on our way again. Today I used Google Earth and MapQuest to go back and relive that misadventure.

 

" The year 1948 was back in what Grandpa called the good old days when smoking was fun and guilt-free. The veterans' habits had been nurtured during the war by the availability of cigarettes at 5 cents per pack in the PX or ship's store and free in field rations. The point of his telling about their low-cost addiction was to try to explain away why, after leaving  their last pack of cigarettes on a rock towards the end of the trip, two grown men would paddle back several miles to retrieve the fags and travel an equal distance to get back to where they turned around. Grandpa said that one consolation was that one of these legs was downwind."

 

Cigarette adds used to dominate magazines and radio like prescription drug commercials and two-page ads dominate TV and magazines now. My Dad smoked Camels so that was what I learned on. I didn't start until I was 19 and had a hard time with coughing and hacking but I stuck with it until it took. "I'd Walk a Mile for a Camel" their ad went. "Lucky Strike Green Has Gone to War" their ad said when they changed from green packs to white to save chromium. "Blow a Little My Way" said the seductive girl to the Chesterfield smoker.

 

"It was four skinny, hard muscled, sun tanned, mosquito bitten, unshaven, smelly canoeists who successfully and happily arrived back at Rainy Lake. Ken, Ned and Jim, freshly graduated from engineering school, went on to start their careers and John went back to college."

 

John and Ken are gone now but Ned is still around, living in a fancy retirement community on the Atlantic. The Old Town Otca still exists, one year older than I am, but that's another story.

 

NEXT: What happened to the Old Town?

Low Tech Canoeing VII - Portaging

Continuing  about our 1948 canoe trip from "Wooden Canoe".

 

"In portaging as well as in paddling the two teams were well matched. The huskier team carried the heavier Old Town and the smaller team carried the lighter Penn Yan. All portages were two man carries. No one had the skill to carry an 18 footer solo.

 

"Attempts to emulate the Indians by carrying gear with a tumpline over the forehead failed miserably. They could not stand the pain in the neck caused by the weight of the packs. The four college guys had to admit that volleyball, downhill skiing, or elbow bending does not develop neck muscles. The best pack turned out to be a war surplus ski trooper rucksack. It rode on the hips, had a low center of gravity, and had room to lash bulky gear on top."

 

Another pack we used was a war surplus bent-plywood packboard that the Infantry used to carry mortar parts or the Quartermasters used to backpack ammunition or jerry cans. It worked OK but you always had to lash or unlash the load. We also had a traditional frame and canvas packboard. We placed the packboards in the bottom of the canoes to keep the loads out of the wet. We used GI ponchos to wear in the rain, cover the load or string up as a kitchen fly. Let's put it this way, most everything an infantryman wore or used to live and fight in the open was useful to the canoeist traveling in the wild, GI mess kits for instance. Of course we didn't have to wear helmets or carry rifles.

 

The cover photograph of the June 1997 issue of "Wooden Canoe" that carried Adam's story showed Ned and Ken portaging the Penn Yan upside down over their heads. It shows that for shoes they wore regular sneakers. Brother John wore war surplus canvas jungle boots from the South Pacific. I wore L.L.Bean canvas canoe shoes. I think the L.L.Bean shoes were best.

 

                               REMARKS ABOUT PORTAGES

 

These are from my narrative/monograph "Locating Michigan's Old Canoe Portages":

 

In an article in the August 1893 issue of "Harper's New Monthly Magazine", Frederic Remington, famed for his western art, tells of a canoe trip on an Ontario river:

 

"...a mile of impossible rapids made a 'carry' or 'portage' necessary. Slinging our packs and taking the seventy-pound canoe on our shoulders, we started down the trail. The torture of this sort of thing is as exquisitely perfect in its way as any ever devised. A trunk porter in a summer hotel simply does for a few seconds what we do by the hour, and as far as reconciling this to an idea of physical enjoyment, it cannot be done."  At the end of the portage he concludes, "...and it is with a little thrill of joy and the largest sigh of relief possible when we again settle the canoe in the water."

 

The late Canadian canoeist/artist Bill Mason echoes this sentiment in his beautiful video Water Walker: "Anybody who tells you portaging* is fun is either gotta be a liar or crazy. Now the walk back for the second load, that's the part I like."

* He pronounced it port-ta'-zhing with with the "a" like in "tag".

 

Deep River Jim said: "Nothing feels quite so good as the rest at the end of the carry." 

 

NEXT: Wind and smoke

Low Tech Canoeing VI - Shooting Rapids

Continuing from the "Wooden Canoe" article about my 1948 canoe trip in Western Ontario.

 

"Shooting rapids was a thrill in more ways than one. It never dawned on them that they should have life jackets (this was before these were called "personal floatation devices"). Deep River Jim's book didn't mention them and Lloyd's Emporium didn't say anything either. Their whitewater training was strictly on-the-job when they started encountering rapids far, far out in the wilderness. Grandpa said that if they really screwed up and need to be rescued, they intended to set an island on fire in the hope that the Canadian authorities would fly over to see what's going on.

 

"The Otca and the Penn Yan performed admirably in the rapids (no longer catamaraned of course). They slid off rocks that their drivers weren't skilled enough to avoid with hardly any damage beyond scratched paint. Even when their drivers involuntarily bailed out, the canoes continued to run the rapids (upside down or right side up depending on what caused the paddlers' departure). Then the canoes would wait patiently in some downstream eddy until the swimming or wading voyageurs arrived. 'The performance of these canoes was a true testament to the practicability of wood and canvas,' said Grandpa. According to him, the most difficult decision when facing a rapids often was not so much whether to run it, but whether to unload the canoe and carry the gear around. A bad decision in this regard meant wet sleeping bags for a couple of nights and the scorn and/or pity of one's companions."

 

We didn't need maps or a guidebook to know when we were going to face a rapids. You could hear the roar well upstream and the louder the roar, the worse the rapids. We would get to shore upstream of the rapids and scout them out. The really bad ones and the falls we would portage around. The ones we decided to run we had to choose whether to run them loaded or empty. Each canoe dumped once. When brother John and I dumped we were empty, having portaged out gear around. When Ken and Ned dumped, they were loaded thus causing a delay until they could get their sleeping bags etc. dried out.

 

When you get dumped from your canoe in a rapids the thing to do to avoid serious injury is to go down on your back feet first using your arms out like a double-bladed kayak paddle.When John and I dumped it was because we didn't hit a triangular standing wave on center. I can still replay in my mind slow-motion that tilt and dump.

 

Happily none of us got hurt on the trip. We were  prepared. We had a good first aid kit and were well trained. Advanced First Aid was part of the curriculum at the Colorado School of Mines. I suppose that's because we were expected to graduate to hazardous jobs. Ken and Ned had Mining Engineer degrees and did, in fact, pursue mining engineering careers, mostly in foreign countries. John had already had a ship sunk out from under him in the Pacific so he was no virgin when it came to swimming for it. I was just a self-confident ex-Army Engineer, used to command. I was the acknowledged leader of the expedition but my companions irreverently called me "Shallow Puddle Jim" instead of my preferred title, "Deep River Jim").

 

We were also prepared if it came to damage to our canoes  We had a repair kit that  included canvas and glue for patches, copper tacks and fine wire. For anything major that was fixable we had a good axe and knives, the woods were full of black spruce trees for gum, birches for bark, and downed seasoned wood. Spruce gum mixed with a little bacon grease would give us the same material that the Heward party used for "gumming" their birch bark canoes back in 1790. These days we would carry a roll of duct tape, but in those days only furnace men knew about duct tape. If we wrecked one canoe we would have doubled up, shed some gear, and hurried on downstream. If we had wrecked both canoes, there was always the Set-the-Island-on-Fire alternative.

 

On the Turtle River fishing was so good it was delaying us so we adopted a rule: No more than two casts above each rapids or falls and two below. The walleyes were usually above and big old northerns below laying in wait for whatever came through. Of course we would release everything except maybe a couple of walleyes for supper.

(Photo is of painting "Shooting the Rapids" by Winslow Homer, 1902.  © Brooklyn Museum/Corbis)

 

NEXT: Portaging

Low Tech Canoeing V - Journals

Like Hugh Heward in 1790, I kept a journal of my 1948 canoe trip only I called it a Canoe Trip Log. After studying Hugh's elegant journal I am a little ashamed of mine. Here are some samples: 

 

"Sat. 30 July: O515 left civilization between railroad and power line. Paddled 1/2 hour to Homestretch Island. Lost big muskie by horsing...caught 16" pike (Northern pike, the natives called them "jackfish") 10 minutes later Ned caught big pike at island. Ate breakfast at 1000. Canoes lashed together for rough water. Rained in at Hook Island .Long haul in rough water (We  are on Rainy Lake) to Standingstone Point. Spent night. Caught pike".

 

" Windbound Sun July 31 Took refuge on island off point. Noon meal on island...swim. Camp Sun night..2 pike".

 

 "0900 on way Mon AM. (Aug 1) Big bass..largemouth. Hector (Ken) caught pike. Stopped for lunch. John no longer virgin...his first pike. Camped Mon night on Sphene Lake after  portage from Rainy Lake.  (RAIN), Hamburgers, fried onions, macaroni and cheese and cocoa for supper...saw two deer."

 

 "Picture #4 at Devils Cascade, #5 at Sphene Lake. Picture #6 at first portage of Manitou River. Camped above rapids after 2 portages, 3 wades & 2 paddle-through rapids.

Two canoes and four guys passed us. They are going to go down the Albany."

 

Very soon I tightened up the herky-jerky narrative and quit counting fish and describing menus. In re-reading this log I have enjoyed reliving some of those upstream struggles of six decades ago.

 

Here is a sample of Hugh's journal. On April 23 the party (Hugh and seven French-Canadian paddlers in two 20 foot birchbark canoes) encountered some Indians spearing sturgeon (near present day Onondaga). He called them "an ill looking band of about 12". They traded some tobacco for a sturgeon and took off when they saw more Indians coming. They ran the rapids at present day Eaton Rapids and kept going and camped probably about where Burchfield County Park is today.          

 

"Saturday Apl 24th 1790. Refited our Cannots with Gum & set off   passed a Rapid in about an hour (Dimondale) after which high broken Land & some pine Trees   the banks of Red land from thence came to a River from the East (Red Cedar) & a little lower two cabins of  Indians from Sagana (North Lansing) they were providing Cannots for their Departure  the course to this Time nearly Nore West by Nore  from thence high broken Land & some pine & Cedar   about 11 oClock came to an island in the Middle of the River & a long Rapid & afterwards another Island about Mid Day. (Delta Mills) Dined  the Course West Nore West & came to another Island  afterwards three Small Islands and some Pine trees on each Side of the River & high Rocks on the North (Grand Ledge) & a small Run of Water from the South (Sandstone Creek) after which another small Island & and a long and pleasant drift of an equal and strong Current   the Banks high but the Beach level & Gravelly bottom to a long but not very strong Rapid & to another Island the Course West by North to again high Banks to the North to another Island  from thence to four others all together   following from here a high Sandy Bank with some pine Trees on the south side after which a Large Island & two small ones following   afterwards three Small Islands & two small meadows to North this last Course nearly West  heavy Wood on all Sides Encamped Opposite an Island" (In Portland State Game Area near Sebawa Corners).

 

I took the time to insert punctuation at the logical places when I was doing my research in 1989 and 1990. That made it easier to follow his route on maps and along the river.

 

This is the day's paddle commemorated by the annual 50 mile Hugh Heward Challenge. This year's Challenge runs from Dimondale to Portland on Saturday April 25 2009.

 

NEXT: Shooting rapids.

Low Tech Canoeing IV - The Food

Sustenance and sanitation on our 1948 canoe trip (from the "Wooden Canoe" article):

"Their food guide was Deep River Jim's 'Grub list for a Two-Weeks' Cruise,' very heavy on bacon, flour, macaroni and beans. On Lloyd's Emporium's recommendation they added hardtack, dried fruit, Canadian canned butter, sugar butter and Cadbury's Carmello Chocolate Bars [the first time I had ever run into Cadbury's. I thought they were great, still do]. Their food supply, supplemented by unbelievably good fishing, turned out to be quite adequate and nourishing but they vastly underestimated their appetite for sweets. Exertion-driven energy demands and a shameful failure of self discipline caused them to deplete a two week's supply of sugar, candy, jam and syrup in five days."

"They were thus facing many days of desperation and possible sucrose starvation when a minor miracle occurred. They rounded a point on what they believed to be a wilderness lake when lo and behold, there was a fly-in fishing lodge with two good-looking Chicago girls in bathing suits sitting on the end of the dock! Grandpa said that it was indicative of the state of their desperation that they were as interested in the prospect of acquiring sugar as they were in the girls".

We prepared food pretty much the same way Hugh and his crew did in 1790. We cooked over an open fire and used mostly "squaw wood" for fuel. Squaw wood is firewood that you can gather without using tools. I had a good lightweight L.L.Bean Hudson Bay axe but seldom used it. I still have it. It is always part of my display at the annual Quiet Water Symposium. We had no stove, no fuel container, no propane, no butane, no Coleman fuel, no freeze-dried foil-packed meals, no saw, no fire pan, no reflector oven, no folding water bucket or cooler. We did have lots of waterproofed matches. We weren't up to flint and steel which is probably what Hugh and the Canadians used. After all, they carried flintlock muskets.

Hugh's crew probably cooked in copper trade kettles. We used a GI surplus nesting aluminum kettle kit topped by a steel fry-pan/cover with a folding handle. The biggest kettle served as our water bucket with the smaller ones for cooking. Our water came straight out of the river or lake, no filter, no chemicals.

We didn't have any trouble with critters getting into our food except for one morning I woke up and there was a skunk going through our stuff. You can be sure I laid there quietly so as to not disturb it until it was satisfied and wandered off. We just had to trim a little bacon.

Traveling through essentially endless wilderness, personal sanitation was no problem. We washed and bathed in the lakes or streams, although the water was too cold except for the briefest of swims. When nature called we would just slip out into the woods and scrape away a spot in the leaves or pine needles. We didn't even carry a shovel to make "cat holes". Our route was little travelled. We only saw one other canoe party the entire trip. Additionally, our jungle hammocks gave us the ability to camp where no tent-campers could. Contrast this with canoeing in the Boundary Waters now where you can only camp at designated sites with box latrines. Or contrast it with the way that Charlie Parmelee travels in his Kruger Sea Wind. He prides himself on no-trace camping, using a fire pan under his stove and some sort of traveling "Thunder Mug"---I've never actually seen it---so that the only sign of his presence might be some matted-down grass where his tent was pitched. He can even sleep in his canoe.

Here is Deep River Jim's "Grub List for two persons on a two-weeks' cruise into wilderness country":

6 lbs. Bacon 2 lbs. Cheese 1/2 lb. Cocoa

6 lbs. Flour 2 lbs. Dried Lima Beans 4 lbs.Corned Beef Hash

3 lbs. Onions 2 lbs. Dried Prunes 2 lbs. Powdered Milk

3 lbs. Cornmeal 1 lb. Dried Apricots 3 lbs. Baked Beans (cans)

3 lbs. Sugar 1 lb. Pea Soup Powder 3 lbs. Tomatoes (cans)

2 lbs. Raisins 1 lb. Chipped Beef 2 lbs. Corn (cans)

2 lbs. Rice 1 lb.Dehydrated Potatoes 2 lbs. Macaroni

The only carried food mentioned in Hugh Heward's journal was pork and corn. Catching, netting or spearing fish would have been easy and they had muskets for killing game. The French explorer LaSalle in his account about walking across the Lower Peninsula in the spring of 1680 tells of shooting stag (deer), bear and turkey for food. They carried flintlocks too.

NEXT: Journals

Low Tech Canoeing III - The Stupid White Men

Heading north: Continuing from the "Wooden Canoe" article  about my 1948 canoe trip in Western Ontario:

 

"The Indians who buzzed by them in gasoline powered freight canoes didn't think the guys were foolish they thought they were stupid for paddling when outboard motors were available.. Grandpa said that from then on they called themselves "the stupid white men".

 

"The Indians that were encountered were mostly families traveling in 20-foot wood and canvas canoes with square sterns for their outboards. Usually these canoes were double-ribbed with half ribs between each pair of full ribs."

 

"The year this trip took place was well beyond the era of birch-bark canoes but a little before the time when Grumman made it possible for canoeists to aluminum-plate every other wet rock in the north country".

 

"Rainy Lake is big, windy water to eighteen foot canoes so they turned the two canoes into a catamaran by lashing them together outrigger fashion with two sturdy saplings. This system provided excellent stability. Four paddlers gave them good power and it didn't matter on which side Ken paddled."

 

(I Emailed Valerie Fons and asked when Verlen developed his catamaran system. She says: "The catamaran poles were part of Verlen's design early on. His prototype Loon had holes drilled in the deck combing for the fiberglass pole to fit into. Ultimate Canoe Challenge may have used a pole with Steve--don't know. Verlen used the pole with my canoe when we paddled Baja, The pole system developed into a pontoon design for the Eddie Bauer Mississippi River Challenge where we used a single hull and put floats out for stability in big Mississippi water.").

 

(Valerie lives on Washington Island between Green Bay and Lake Michigan in Wisconsin. She has adopted six kids. She and Joe run Bread & Water, a restaurant, lodging and kayak tour business. Her big deal this summer is the Washington Island Canoe and Kayak Race, Expedition and Symposium.  She needs a kayak tour leader--a paid position. Also a cook for the kitchen at Bread & Water--hopefully someone who can paddle too).

 

Continuing: "Army surplus jungle hammocks were used in lieu of tents and worked out very well. Jungle hammocks have sewn-in mosquito netting and waterproof roofs. All you need for a camp site are a few trees and a place to build a fire.  Since no level ground was required their choice of camp sites was practically unlimited."

 

(You had to do a good job of tying your hammock to the trees as Ned learned the first night when his hammock sagged and dipped his butt in a puddle. We used war surplus down and feather sleeping bags. They worked fine. As I learned on a subsequent trip on the Manistee the GI blanket sleeping bag is way too cold.

 

NEXT: Food

Low Tech Canoeing II - Trip Planning

Planning for my 1948 canoe trip (from the "Wooden Canoe" article):

 

"Their trip planning guide was an autographed copy of Deep River Jim's Wilderness Trail Book published in 1935 by the Open Road Pioneers Club for Boys."

 

The Open Road for Boys was a monthly boys' magazine encouraging the outdoor life published from 1919 into the 50s. It cost 10 cents per copy.

 

 "Of course this was well before Cliff Jacobson was dispensing canoe trip wisdom in books and magazines. In fact, it was probably before Cliff was born.

 

"After months of planning and days of driving the intrepid foursome arrived at Ft. Francis, Ontario, across the border from International Falls, Minnesota."

 

...with the Old Town on top of my Dad's 1940 Chrysler Windsor and the Penn Yan on a boat trailer behind.

 

 "There they decided to patronize Lloyd's Tourist Emporium-Canoes, Blankets, Tents, Indian Guides and Provision to stock up on food, advice and any needed equipment that they hadn't bought at the War Surplus stores back home."

 

"Their intention was to paddle the length of Rainy Lake and by a series of lakes and straits, and one long portage across the height-of-land, work their way into the Hudson Bay drainage and re-provision at a Hudson's Bay Post. The return was to be upstream on a different chain of lakes and streams to two small portages, which would take them to the headwaters of the Turtle River, then down the Turtle and back into Rainy Lake."

 

I worked out this route using Canada Department of Mines and Resouces maps which I had sent for that showed in detail all lakes and streams as well as roads and railroads. In those days Ontario was much better mapped than Michigan. Also in those days there was but one east-west road between the international border and the Arctic Ocean, Ontario Highway 17. Our north-bound destination was Wabigoon on that highway.

 

"The outfitter told them the trip they planned was dangerous and that they were foolish to go without guides. The two veterans concluded that waves on Rainy Lake or rapids on the Turtle River couldn't be as dangerous as a foxhole on Okinawa or a Destroyer Escort under Kamikaze attack in the East China Sea. Ned and Ken just didn't know any better. So guideless they headed into the wilderness."

 

NEXT: The stupid white men.

Low Tech Canoeing

I suppose I sound like an old man nostalgic for the " Good Old Days" but I am glad I did my canoeing before GPS was invented. It must take away a lot of the thrill of wilderness travel when you know you can't get lost.

 

This is a re-telling for the Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge 09 audience of the story of my 1948 canoe trip in Western Ontario which was first published in "Wooden Canoe", the journal of the Wooden Canoe Heritage Association, in its June 1997 issue. The article was entitled "Grandfather's Collegiate Canoe Trip". The author was my grandson Adam Tury.

 

I will Email this in what my nieces call "digestible bites" to those who were last year's recipients of my almost-daily reports on Charlie Parmelee's Ultimate Hugh Heward Challenge progress paddling and wading and portaging from Lake Erie to Lake Michigan. If you want off the list or know anyone who would like to receive this year's reports let me know. Once th UHHC 09 gets underway I will send out daily reports.

 

Canoe and eqipment-wise in 1948 we were much more like the 1790 Hugh Heward party than the Challengers who will be paddling and portaging across Michigan's Lower Peninsula this Spring. Grumman was just converting one of its World War II fighter-plane factories to the manufacture of aluminum canoes. Royalex and Kevlar had not yet been invented, graphite was for pencil lead, bicyle wheels were for bicyles not canoe carts, and what I might call the Kruger Revolution in canoe design was still decades in the future. In fact, this trip took place 15 years before Verlen first paddled a canoe of any kind.

 

"Once upon a time four college guys went on a canoe trip to Western Ontario. Two were veterans (war veterans, not canoe trip veterans) and two were not. I shall call these collegiate voyageurs Ken, Ned, John and Jim.

 

Ken and Ned purchased an 18 foot Guide Model Penn Yan wood and canvaas canoe from a War Surplus store for the trip and sold it back to the same store afterwards. They were both of rather sleight stature and quite inexperienced.

 

Jim and John, the veterans, had their family's 18 foot wood and canvas Old Town Otca which had been built in 1921 The Otca had spent most of its previous career on a local resort lake surrounded by cottages and big-band dance pavillions, and where the only wild things were the Saturday night parties. Jim and John were both over six feet tall and had paddling experience.

 

I turned out to be an even match. The Penn Yan had a low bow and stern and was sleek and light in weight. The Otca had the clssic high ends and was heavy with many layers of paint and varnish. Thus the two smaller, inexperienced canoeists in thei fast Penn Yan kept right up with the two larger, stronger, more experienced paddlers with their heavy weight wind bucker. Actually the Penn Yan traveled more miles than the Old Town because Ken didn't believe in the J-stroke. He insisted on switching sides to steer when he was in the stern, a practice which resulted in a lot of zigging znd zagging by the Penn Yan.

 

NEXT: Trip planning

The Courtship of Jim & Elaine 2.2 - The Engagement

I calculate that overall we had 81 Saturday night dates. Somewhere about the 60th I think it was I started to get antsy. I had casually mentioned marriage, had tried out the name Elaine Woodruff to myself and thought it had a good ring to it, and on an impulse had bought a diamond ring in Joliet where I was living in a hotel. I had showed the ring to brother John to show that my intentions toward Elaine were honorable. Now how to get Elaine on board with the idea?

One Saturday night in the Fall of 1950 while saying good night I told her that I wanted to be more than her Saturday night date and since we didn't seem to be making any progress I wasn't coming back. Well that got her attention and it wasn't long before she was wearing my ring (and getting it appraised) and putting announcements in the St. Joe Herald-Press, the Benton Harbor News-Palladium and the Watervliet Record. I have already told you about our wedding.

The Courtship of Jim & Elaine 2.1 - Saturday Night Dates

Having a date on Saturday night was very important to girls in our day. Remember, in those days the girl had to wait by the phone for some guy to call. I don't know when Elaine fell for me romantically but I am sure the main attraction for some time was that I was a steady, reliable Saturday night date who cleaned up pretty good. Of course my motives for showing up every Saturday night were not exactly pure.

 

In those days everybody dressed up when going out on a date. I always wore a suit  or sport coat and tie and shined my shoes. Elaine was a fashion plate. I think she spent most of her meager salary at the women's clothing stores in beautiful downtown St. Joe. One reason she could do that is that she was living pretty cheap at home at Herman & Ruth's Bed and Breakfast (and Lunch and Dinner).

 

Here is how Saturdays went. The work week with Fried Bacon & Eggs ended at noon on Saturdays. From wherever I was I would take off for Watervliet. Maybe Joliet, Illinois; Detroit or even Ottumwa, Iowa. When I got there if I had time I washed the Kaiser out in the west side yard under the big elm tree. Then shower, get dressed up and head for St. Joe down US 12. Elaine would be doing her hair and nails and taking a bath in that old claw-footed tub at Belke's and getting all prettied up for me. Always a dress (with nylons and a garter belt in those days...happily panty-hose hadn't yet been invented).

 

Taking her home in the wee, small hours of Sunday morning at first I would park in front of her house on Broad Street (a steep, brick-paved hill), climb the steep steps to her front porch and kiss her goodnight in the glow ot the street lights. Eventually I wised up and took her around the back way, a dark, dead-end alley, and kissed her goodnight in the car for a while before I walked her to the back door.

The Courtship of Jim & Elaine 2 - The First Date

When I left you last I had gone to work for Ford, Bacon and Davis in St. Joe. I spent most of my time in the field in my 1946 Jeep (making a profit at 8 cents per mile) trying to get farmers to sign right-of-way agreements authorizing the construction of a pipeline across their land. Not an easy task. Every time I went to the office above the Dime Store I would climb those stairs, always tipping my hat (felt fedora) to Elaine who invariably would smile in recognition and maybe give me a "Hi".

 

From January to June 1949 I repeated that routine (though not every day since I spent a lot of time in Illinois). I made no attempt to ask her out since: 1)  At first I thought she was married,  2) I was naturally shy around good looking women, and 3) I was still somewhat wounded by her long ago rejection of me when I was a vulnerable teenager (I am sure you are thinking, "poor baby").

 

Well, there was this right-of-way agent by the name of Roy (he drove a Cadillac thus did not make out very well at 8 cents per mile) who decided to become the matchmaker between the two of us. He took me aside and told me that he had investigated and learned that: a) Elaine was not married, b) She had no steady boy friend thus presumably was available, and c) She would not refuse me if I asked for a date.

 

So this one June day while we were down for coffee Roy told me that the Chamber of Commerce was passing out free tickets for a cruise on Lake Michigan that next Saturday night. I decided that I should quit procastinating and use the free tickets as an excuse to ask for a date. Thus I headed up the stairs with a plan to proposition Fair Elaine.

 

I inquired and Elaine confirmed that there were indeed free tickets and would I like one? I said I would take two if she would go with me (smooth, eh?) To which she responded that would be nice but she had already invited a girlfriend (a "dog" who shall go nameless) and she couldn't disappoint her (to myself: "Oh crap! Not again!) so if she agreed to go with me could the girlfriend go along too?. Well, that wasn't my idea of a great first date but having gone this far I didn't want to back out so I agreed. What would you call it, a date and a half? Or half a date?

 

On the appointed evening (June 23 1949) I picked up Elaine in my freshly washed and shined 1949 Kaiser Traveler * and then picked up the girlfriend and off to the docks we go.

         * Newly purchased from Uncle Bob Thayer

 

I don't remember much about what went on aboard th SS Roosevelt but Elaine said I ran off at the mouth a lot about driving my Jeep to Alaska (not so smooth). It was a lovely night as the boat took us out on Lake Michigan and eventually back to the dock. We never did shake the girlfriend.

 

Subsequently I asked her for a second date, and she agreed, which led to a year-and-a-half long courtship, mostly Saturday nights hopping from bar-to-bar drinking "7 & 7" (Seagram's 7 Crown whiskey in 7up) and listening to the Juke Box a lot. Our favorites were Vaughn Monroe singing "Lucky Old Sun" and Frankie Lane with "Mule Train".

 

 Elaine has said that she didn't expect anything to come of our dating because I would soon be off to Alaska. Actually it was 34 years before I got there, then it was with Elaine to visit son Jim.

The Courtship of Jim & Elaine I.3 - We Meet Again

Dad got a tip from a shirt-tail relative than an engineering firm in St. Joe was hiring. He and the chief cook and bottle washer and laundress encouraged me to get up early and go and check it out. It turns out that Ford, Bacon and Davis, Inc., engineers for the Michigan-Wisconsin Pipe Line Company, had opened a field office upstairs above Murphy's Dime Store on the main drag in St. Joe. This was a big engineering firm with a home office at 1 Broadway in New York City which had the contract to build a natural gas pipeline from Texas to Michigan and Wisconsin.

 

Also above Murphy's was the office of the St. Joe Chamber of Commerece, fronted by a good looking girl with a great figure whose name I later learned was Elaine Belke. She looked like the Elaine of "Ann and Elaine" who had rejected me all those many years before down at Shadowland, although no longer a teenager. I tipped my hat politely as I climbed the stairs and wended my way back to the Ford, Bacon and Davis office (sometimes known as "Fried Bacon and Eggs").

 

There I presented my resume' to the one in charge of hiring. He took one look at it, went over to another guy and showed it to him and came back and told me I was hired. Just like that. No interview, no delay. He wanted me to come to work that day.

 

I did have an impressive resume' come to think of it; oil well drilling experience, Captain and Company Commander in the Army Engineers and engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines and only 24 years old.

 

On the other hand, maybe they were just desperate for help. Any way, when I returned home that day I already had a job. Pay $300 per month (44 hour working week), $8 per diem for room and food, and 8 cents per mile for use of my car. This was very comparable to oil company jobs in Texas in those days.

 

 Though I didn't fully grasp it at first, I had stumbled onto a great career opportunity, a chance to get in on the ground floor of a major Michigan-based project that could keep me from having to go to work in Texas or back overseas. Also at the top of the stairs above the Dime Store there was that girl who had rejected me.

 

NEXT: Our first date.

The Courtship of Jim & Elaine I.2 - Time Marches On

After my humiliation that summer at Shadowland I finished High School, went off to the Colorado School of Mines for three years, then into the Army, then back at Mines after the War under the GI Bill graduating in 1948, then goofed off for several months canoeing in Canada, pheasant hunting in South Dakota and deer hunting in the UP.

 

About New Years of 1949 I began to feel a little useless and decided it was time to go to work. As a graduating Senior at Mines I had had several job offers from oil companies; Aramco in Saudi Arabia, Creole in Venezuela and Skelly in Texas among others but had turned them all down in favor of screwing off for a few months of freedom. No college, no Army, no job, no wife, no obligations. That's FREEDOM (made possible of course by living like a leech at Allen and Genevieve's Bed and Breakfast) Years later when younger brother John was living at the folks' B&B Elaine quoted Mother as saying "I wish John would get married, I'm getting tired of ironing his shirts."

Next: We meet again.

The Courtship of Jim & Elaine 1.0 - The Rejection

Last week on our 58th Wedding Anniversary I sent out the story of our somewhat disorganized wedding back in 1951. I suspect that some of you could come up with similar stories. In fact, in a telephone coversation with Don Thayer day before yesterday, he started telling me the story of his wedding which sounds even more disorganized than mine. I have encouraged him to share it with us by Email.

 

I thought you might be interested in a couple of stories on the rocky road to romance that led our wedding.

 

                                   THE REJECTION

 

Back in Watervliet High School in the 30's there was a group of three or four of us guys who would go "wolfing" on weekends. "Wolfing" consisted of driving around various towns in Van Buren and Berrien Counties in a car or pickup truck (borrowed from our parents) trying to pick up girls. The usual routine was to go to Chrystal Palace on Paw Paw Lake on Saturday night and Shadowland at Silver Beach on Lake Michigan on Sunday night. Both of these were large dance halls at which "Big Bands" (some famous, some local) played Swing Music.

 

This one summer Sunday night four of us, Bud, Bob, Louie and I went to Shadowland. The main attraction that night was a pair of good looking girls (known to us as "Ann and Elaine") who were always dancing together. After a lot of urging by Louie and Bob, Bud and I decided to ask these girls to dance. Bud, handsome and athletic, over six feet tall with wavy blonde hair, said he got the blonde (Ann)* and I readily agreed since I already preferred the brunette, Elaine. I was nearly 6'4" tall with a full head of hair in those days so as we approached the girls' table we didn't exactly look like a pair of losers.

 

 We more than met one of the girls' known criteria, namely that were were taller than they were, but we must have been lacking somewhere else since when we asked them if they would like to dance, they turned us down...and din't even invite us to sit down.

 

Well, you can imagine the state of our egos as we retreated to our table (and our buddies' snickering) and departed the dance hall with our tails between our legs. With me, it's the humiliations that I remember the longest. 

 

Elaine has said that the reason they turned us down was that they really did not know how to dance. I never bought that alibi since out on the dance floor they looked like Ginger Rogers and Ginger Rogers.

 

* Ironically, Ann eventually became the Matron of Honor at our wedding.

Next: Time Marches On

Our Wedding Anniversary

Today is our 58th Wedding Anniversary. There will be no celebration. As you probably all know Elaine has been in Assisted Living for over a year now. I told her about it yesterday but she won't remember it today. There probably will be some tears on the keyboard but I can't let the day pass unrecognized so here is our story. Some of it is funny now, but wasn't that day.

Elaine doesn't remember much, if anything, about our wedding but does remember such things as when we were parked down by the St. Joe River necking in my 1949 Kaiser Traveler and a nosy cop came up and tapped on the widow. She still laughs about that. She also laughs remembering that the day after I gave her an engagement ring she went to the local jeweler and had it appraised (for insurance purposes she protests when I kid her about it). She was properly impressed.

Our wedding was at the Congregational Church in St. Joe on January 6, 1951, at the ridiculous hour of 8 PM. I was not responsible for that or hardly any of the subsequent miscues. Grooms were not involved in wedding planning. My brother John stood up for me and Elaine's best friend Ann Layman was her Matron of Honor (both gone long ago). Brother Dick and Elaine's brothers Russ and Rich were ushers. The church was decorated with flowers and ivy from my Mother's garden was wound around some posts (Elaine took cuttings and later planted them at our home on Pleasant Grove Road in Lansing where they thrived). Hidden behind some flowers was a wire recorder (the predecessor of the reel-to-reel tape recorder) so the entire wedding was recorded. We were much surprised at that. We still have it, transcribed onto two 12" 78 RPM platters. We have played them for the family on special anniversaries.

After the wedding a reception was held at the Josephine Morton Memorial Home over in Benton Harbor. But while the friends and relatives gathered there, Elaine and I went to a photographer's studio in St. Joe for formal wedding pictures of the bride. The photographer did a beautiful job and was so proud of his work that he displayed an oversized portrait of Elaine in his shop window for a long time (I still have it hanging on the wall in my map room where I see it every day). But all that time the relatives and friends were standing around over in Benton Harbor with no one in charge, awkwardly introducing themselves, no MC and NO BOOZE. We had a ham buffee but no food was served before we arrived.

We didn't have a professional photographer at the wedding or the reception, counting on relatives to take pictures. Bad mistake.. All the pictures in the church are from the back, and the pictures from the reception look more like a funeral than a wedding. Even the the wedding party and the parents posed for the cake cutting look like we were at a wake. There were no color photos because the flash on my mother's Argus C2 35 mm camera didn't work (remember blue flash bulbs?)

To compound the boredom the bride and groom hung around and hung around.(I think that foretold my career as a garralous old man). When we finally got in my car to head out with everybody waving and cheering and I stepped on the gas of the Kaiser, the motor roared but the car didn't move. Some of my smart-ass relatives and friends had secrectly jacked up the rear end so that the tires did not quite touch. They didn't help me either as I got out and rocked the car off the jacks.

In my day if you were going out with a "Good Girl" (I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl that Married Dear Old Dad) you could get to "first base" after a couple of dates but it took quite a bit longer to get to "second base" and after much longer you might get to "third base" but you didn't figure to "score" till the wedding night. The way it is with my childrens' and grandchildrens' generations could only be dreamed of by the randiest teenage boy of my generation. I can understand the male approach these days, "Why buy a cow when you can get all the milk you want through the fence?", but I don't understand how girls can blythley pass out all those "Freebies".

Any way, back to Elaine and I. Despite careful scheduling  the "curse" visited her the day before the wedding, and the one thing I got to plan, the place of our wedding night, I screwed up. I chose the Burdick Hotel in Kalamazoo. When we arrived there late it was full up and the room I got had TWIN BEDS!  Well, we were pretty tired anyway. Things eventually worked out for us as evidenced by Karen's arrival 1952 and Jim's in 1956.